nothing's wrong - nothing at all
by infinitestars10
Summary: Her hands hit the stone floor, her nails scrabbling for something, someone to cling onto. She slowly collapses into a ball, and for the first time in her life, she understands what utter humiliation feels like. And she doesn't like it at all. oneshot.


**AN: Eating disorders are not something to joke about. I'm writing about this to show the effects of it, and TRIGGER WARNING.**

**Update: 8/3/2015**

**I really hated how abrupt the ending was so I changed it (finally) nothing much is really changed.**

_If you keep eating like that, you'll turn out fat._

She looks down at the bag of soft-baked chocolate cookies. Then she shrugs, seemingly indifferent; she's only eaten three. That's not much, isn't it?

(inside she's debating the truth of her red-headed father's observing)

She finishes off the cookie she's stuffing in her mouth. Then she stops, three more in the paper bag.

_I'm not even hungry. _

As if.

* * *

She looks in the mirror. Her ankles are painstakingly thin, despite the food she's been consuming.

She shouldn't, couldn't starve herself.

It's wrong. It's immoral. It's stupid.

It's the sort of thing that depressed people do. Right? She's lucky she gets three meals a day, and enough to afford those heavenly soft-baked cookies, so she shouldn't starve herself.

(at the ripe age of nine, she's already been exposed enough to social media and reality television to know that it's called anorexia)

She hates vomiting. She has very significant memories of puking on the yellow, bright elementary school bus because her wonderful parents (really, they are) forced milk down her throat even though she was clearly lactose sensitive. Then the nurses sending her home with the bitter taste of bile burning her mouth.

* * *

She's seen the pictures her friends from school take of her.

She doesn't care about the ugly ones. In fact, she does them on purpose.

(maybe to hide the chubbiness of her face; just maybe)

At fifteen she spends her nights thinking about the needle slowly moving to the right.

She knows she's average - underweight even.

She knows that people call her skinny.

But she gets a salad the next day, all the while earning a mortified look from Albus and a nod of approval from Lily.

* * *

She's getting worried about herself: she gets smaller portions of lunch during the day, and most of the time her lunch breaks is filled with meetings.

(prefect duties, extra credit, conference, community and service)

_Nothing's wrong, _she thinks.

Nothing is wrong.

* * *

Spring arrives at the porch of her dormitory door (she snickers at the use of the language: wouldn't' it just be easier to live at home?) and shorts are being forced onto her legs.

She's not blind-her thighs are getting meatier, and gosh, she's practically got a double chin.

A lunch is skipped in favor of a meeting that she cannot _cannot_ be late to.

(she knows fully well that they were fine with her getting lunch first)

She's left with a rumbling stomach during divination but no one hears _thank god._

She shivers too much during the two-hour history of magic lesson too, despite being strategically placed in front of the fireplace.

* * *

Her dinners are never missed – every time she does that, she misses some important news.

Lunches though – that can be... compromised.

* * *

Theodore Abbot – hufflepuff, just like his parents – asks her to Hogsmeade. She says yes, though she gives most of her butterbeer to him and when he drags her to honeydukes with a dopey smile on his face, she laughs and thinks she's in love.

Then she gets there and has to refrain from touching the sweet _sweet _gooiness of warm chocolate fudge and sugar quills and -

FOCUS.

* * *

After finding that her stomach is protruding slightly more than normal, she spends all night exercising until she's dizzy and she hates puking so she stops and lies down and gets a grip on herself and then starts all over again until she really can't.

* * *

Theodore, her dear _dear _boyfriend of two months dumps her in the Great Hall a week later complete with publicity and a sympathetic look from Albus, Lily, James, and her whole freaking family.

She spares three exact tears over him. She's too fat – that's it.

* * *

She showers at the prefect's bathroom, blissfully private. She sinks into the burning hot water – just the way she likes it.

When she applies conditioner to her hair – a thick red gooey substance that is definitely magical – she finds that her vibrant red strands stick to her hands and then they get washed away once she drops them into the water.

She lets one tear slip down her face, and she reevaluates her choices about lunch- but her hair can be compromised, right? A few charms will fix everything.

* * *

She can't help it anymore: she skips breakfast and dinner and lunch, all in one day, with a small bowl of spinach before sleep.

When her friends ask her where she was, she lies and tells them she was practicing for O.W.L.S.

They scoff at her, but they know her mother's stellar grades and how she did the same thing. Her lies are accepted and forgotten.

_Albus looks at her like there's a fly on her face and she demands the reason to why he's looking at her like that and he says nothing too quickly_

* * *

She's eaten an apple a day for a month. She knows she's damaging every part of her body, but she can't help it – she feels pride at the accomplishment.

Her knees feel weak, and she finds it harder to sleep.

Her grades are falling. The day after reports come out, she casts a silencing spell on the curtains of her bed, and cries herself to sleep, thinking about her mother and how disappointed she would be.

She survives with an apple for the next two days as a punishment.

* * *

She denies all offers to go to Hogsmeade next weekend.

She studies all day, her mind constantly wandering to other things and she catches herself falling asleep half the time.

She doesn't eat.

Albus confronts her about her weight.

_How have you gotten so skinny so fast?_

She counterattacks immediately with fire she didn't know she has.

Then she promptly breaks down, and Albus looks on with a sympathetic look on his face.

He reaches out to touch her shoulder, but before his hands make contact with her knitted maroon sweater, she runs, and runs, and runs like the coward she is.

_She's too afraid to face the music; she's such a chicken_

Her hands hit the stone floor, her nails scrabbling for something, someone to cling onto but finds no one except the cold floor.

She slowly collapses into a ball, and she understands how bad this is, how she should not _should not_ be starving herself to death and it's interfering with her life.

* * *

The next day she talks to Albus (with shaking hands and darting eyes) and tells him that she'll deal with it herself, though she will appreciate a little help.

Albus was always her best friend.

The next day she eats a salad for lunch; she only spares a glance for the scales in the prefect's bathroom.

An improvement is an improvement, right?


End file.
